South Africa has experienced a different history from other nations in Africa because of early immigration from Europe and the strategic importance of the Cape Sea Route. European immigration began shortly after the Dutch East India Company, in 1652, founded a station at what would become Cape Town. The closure of the Suez Canal during the Six-Day War exemplifies its significance. The country's relatively developed infrastructure made its mineral wealth available and important to Western interests, particularly throughout the late nineteenth century and, with international competition and rivalry, during the Cold War. South Africa is ethnically diverse, with the largest white, Indian, and racially mixed communities in Africa. Black South Africans, who speak nine officially recognised languages and many more dialects, account for slightly less than 80% of the population.

Racial strife between the white minority and the black majority has played a large part in South African history and politics, culminating in apartheid, which was instituted in 1948 by the National Party (although segregation existed before then). The laws that defined apartheid began to be repealed or abolished by the National Party in 1990, after a long and sometimes violent struggle (including economic sanctions from the international community) by the Black majority as well as many White, Coloured, and Indian South Africans.

Several philosophies and ideologies have developed in South Africa, including ubuntu (the belief in a universal bond of sharing that connects all humanity) and Jan Smuts's holism.